Finally got it to work with "bugger them till they love you" approach.
Could not find any markings of the direct KLI port on the board, so tried all of them. Got one to work, traced the wiring to X69 (KSI port I think).
This got to the point where VisualWorks could find the controller and see projects on it. However, ddownloading them did not work (could not find part of the path) until I created folder "C:\Users\User\Documents\WorkVisual Projects\Downloaded Projects".
It could be that rebooting the operator (me) might have helped.
There was nothing in between the laptop and the controller and nothing else on the network (someone asked).
Thank you for the advice and support.
This is not necessary, but just to sate my curiosity, the direct KLI port on the motherboard, does it look like all other ethernet(rj45) connections?
I would post a picture of the board itself for reference, but not sure if forum guidelines allow that.